Ten years of the iPod (photos)

The iPod's only been around a decade, but its iterations and variations are numerous. Check out the iPod's most memorable moments.

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The first iPod

The iPod's only been around a decade, but its iterations and variations are numerous. Check out the iPod's most memorable moments.

October 2001 - 5GB, $399

A 5GB hard drive. Ten hours of battery life. A 160x128-pixel, LED-backlit black-and-white screen. Twenty minutes of antiskip protection. Back when Apple first debuted the iPod on October 23, 2001, those specs seemed pretty good, although $399 was pricey indeed compared with the Nomad and other MP3 jukeboxes. Also, this new iPod only worked with FireWire, and needed a Mac to pair with its software program, iTunes. I bought one because I thought carrying 1,000 songs in my pocket was exciting, at least more so than lugging my portable CD player around. If you were bored, spinning the physical scroll wheel around never ceased to be hypnotizing. It's a shame that giant FireWire port sat exposed on the top, though.

iPod for Windows

July 2002

The iPod was originally a Mac-only affair, but that was quickly fixed: in 2002 the second-generation iPod worked with both Windows and Mac, a breakthrough concession by Apple. This made the iPod a true consumer product that broke outside of the Mac computer bubble, and paved the way for its worldwide acceptance.

iTunes Music Store

April 2003

Before the Music Store, iTunes was simply a way of ripping and organizing MP3 files. The genius of Apple's store was its large repository of 99-cent songs, which could be downloaded independently without requiring a whole-album purchase. The idea revolutionized and threatened the music industry, and was the first step in Apple's massive move toward selling content.

A failed design: The touch-based third-gen iPod

April 2003 - 10GB, $299; 15GB, $399; 30GB, $499

The third-gen iPod was the first redesign of Apple's music player since its 2001 debut, unveiled along with the iTunes Music Store. The new iPod was eagerly awaited, but a failure of design. Positives: the introduction of capacitive touch instead of a physical wheel. Negatives: everything was touch-controlled, with no moving parts or clickable buttons, and Play/Pause was relegated to an awkward set of LED-backlit touch panels. The case was thinner and capacities were boosted up to 20GB. Yes, I owned one of these, and yes, I thought it was cool...but it was also annoying and impossible to control from a pocket.

iPod Mini: The debut of the click wheel

January 2004 - 4GB, $249

Some might see the iPod Mini as an important step for the iPod because it was the first time the product line split into more than one device. While it was small for its time, the bulky Mini still had a spinning hard drive. Its real innovation was the click wheel, an ingenious marriage of capacitive touch-and-click controls that became the backbone of every iPod to follow, until the rise of the iPod Touch. The click wheel is still on the iPod Classic today.

iPod Photo: The color screen

October 2004 - 40GB, $499

Apple used to release iPods throughout the calendar year, occasionally at multiple times. The year 2004 saw the Shuffle in January, new mainstream iPods midyear, and the iPod Photo in October. This was the first iPod with a color screen, but it could only display photos, not video--and the thicker body and higher $499 price made it only a novelty for most.

iPod Shuffle: Tiny affordability

January 2005 - 512MB, 1GB; $99 (512MB version)

Shaped like a stick of gum and lacking a screen, the Shuffle was a bold but necessary move for Apple, finally moving an iPod product into the sub-$100 zone. Some complained that the Shuffle could basically only play tracks in a set order or on shuffle, but this device has evolved, survived, and gotten even cheaper. Today, it's the size of a tie clip and costs $49.

iPod Nano

September 2005 - 2GB, $199; 4GB, $299

The idea of a smaller iPod was carried even further with the unveiling of the Nano, the first iPod with a screen to use flash memory. It followed in the footsteps of the Shuffle that was released in January, and marked a move toward far more easily portable iPods, as well as relatively more affordable models. For many people, the Nano began to become the go-everywhere iPod of choice. I loved mine because I could fit it in the change pocket of my jeans.

iPod Video (fifth generation)

October 2005
30 GB, $299; 60GB, $399

This was a big step for the iPod: bucking claims that video wasn't on Apple's radar, the fifth-generation iPod added video playback and the iTunes Store gained a TV category. The device also got a larger screen, a thinner body, and a smaller click wheel. "Lost" and several other ABC shows along with video podcasts were among the early meager offerings, but this iPod laid the foundation for what was to come next.

iPod Touch

September 2007 - 8GB, $299; 32GB, $399

The iPhone marked a massive change of phase, to a new operating system (then called iPhone OS), a large multitouch screen, and the birth of a true multifunction device with Web browsing and e-mail. The iPod Touch was a bit of a hobbled iPhone at first, but it's become a device for which playing music is only one of many features. To many, it's a modern PDA. The iPod Touch was the first iPod to have onboard iTunes Store access, and the rise of the App Store turned the device into a handheld game system.

The buttonless Shuffle

March 2009 - 4GB, $80

Even great companies have mishaps, and the quickly forgotten 2009 Shuffle is certainly one of them. Apple went too far with the miniaturization, removing the tiny click controls completely in favor of an awkward voice-control interface and in-line headphone controls. CNET's Donald Bell admitted in his review that the idea felt like a "practical joke." The idea was dropped the following year, and the tiny clip-on Shuffle with buttons returned.

iPod Classic: The final click wheel

September 2007 - 80GB, $249; 160GB, $349

The iPod Touch changed the game, but the original iPod stuck around and earned a "classic" moniker. The sixth-gen iPod was clad in aluminum and added increased hard-drive storage capacities. The Classic survives today, despite all rumors of its demise.

iPod Nano (2010)

September 2010 - 8GB, $149; 16GB, $179

Apple boldly reduced the Nano to a size barely larger than a Shuffle, adding a touch screen but dropping the camera, the video playback functions, and the iconic click wheel. Many griped, but there was a side benefit to the smaller size: watchbands emerged to turn the Nano into the first iPod wristwatch. The 2011 iPod Nano software update has, not surprisingly, added more digital watch faces.

iPod Touch (2010)

The 2011 iPod Touch is the same as the 2010 iPod Touch. Front- and rear-facing video cameras and an improved processor have made the Touch into virtually the same device as the iPhone 4. FaceTime video chat and iMessage continue to transform today's iPod into more of a communication device than ever before.